The Experiences of Ghanaian Live-in Caregivers in the United States

Using the convergence of the impact of globalization and political turmoil in Ghana on Ghanaian women as a backdrop, this book examines the migration of the women to the US and their decisions to care for upper middle class white seniors who elected to stay in their homes to be cared for by private caregivers. The book explores the attraction of domestic care work, the women’s perceptions of their job, their relationships with their clients, and the dynamics of their relationships with their immediate families and families left behind in Ghana. It also analyzes the women’s interactions with the immigrant community from their remote work sites. The book examines widely-held beliefs about domestic work as undervalued, under-remunerated, and relegated to marginalized immigrant women of color. While admitting that these problems exist, the women whose stories are told in the book did not believe that their brand of care work, which they called private practice, was undervalued or underpaid. They also did not think that racism played a role in the concentration of immigrant women of color in domestic care work as widely believed, although, again, the women admitted that there was racism in American society. By doing so, the women symbolically placed themselves beyond the institutional barriers that constrain the lives of women of color in American society. And while it addresses common themes like exploitation, abuse, restriction of movement, etc. that other studies of immigrant live-in caregiving address, this book stands out in two major ways. First is its truly transnational character. It links the women’s background in Ghana to their immigration history and how these two influenced their choice as well as perceptions of care work and then loops their experience of care work back to expectations in Ghana. Second, the book validates the women’s voices as a product of their cultural background, thus making the case that the women’s choices and experiences were informed by conditions in the US and the cultural baggage the women brought with them. The book argues that private care work satisfied women’s financial expectations, and with that, leverage in their families.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: Women, Globalization, Migration, and Work Chapter 2: Ghana in the Global Political Economy Chapter 3: Ghanaian Women and the International Migration Process Chapter 4: The Chance and Choice of Live-in Caregiving Chapter 5: The Dynamics of Live-in Caregiving Chapter 6: Organizing Family from a Distance Chapter 7: Live in at what Cost? Chapter 8: Rethinking Immigrant Women’s Care Work

About the Author :
Martha Donkor is associate professor of history and women’s and gender studies at West Chester University of Pennsylvania.

Review :
This book makes an extremely important and original contribution to the literature on globalization of domestic work, to the emerging literature on the care economy which is dominated by transnational immigrant women who enter private live-in care arrangements with clients, and more generally, to the study of women in the domestic work industry as well as the local and global forces that explain why an increasing number of women from the global South seek economic opportunities in the global North. The study’s central concern – the lived experiences of Ghanaian live-in caregivers – breaks new ground. To the best of my knowledge, it is the first text that seeks to place the experiences of Ghanaian women in the U.S. squarely within the burgeoning literature on the care economy. This is long overdue given the rapidly expanding involvement of Ghanaian and African women in live-in care in the U.S., an area of increasing importance in an aging economy. This book gives visibility and voice to a group that is seldom seen and rarely heard through rich research details and histories of individual live-in caregivers. This work is a vivid exposition of the realities and experiences Ghanaian women immigrants encounter in domestic care work. It's an emerging trend requiring reading and understanding by gender activists, teachers, students, and practitioners in care work and public health. Dr. Donkor has shown a light on a hidden part of the immigrant story that complicates our understanding of class and social status as it relates to domestic work in the U.S. She has expanded our knowledge of paid care-giving, and given us a new —and surprising— layer to a story about race and gender and class and globalization, this one not quite so heavily laden with exploitation and undervalued labor.?